DORA and SPACE Metrics: Measuring What Really Matters in Software Development

Summary

• Introduction
• What Are DORA Metrics?
• What Are SPACE Metrics?
• Why These Metrics Became Popular
• Practical Use Cases
• Applying DORA and SPACE in Practice
• Concepts That Go in the Opposite Direction
• Conclusion

Introduction

“How do we know if our engineering team is doing a good job?”

This question comes up again and again in engineering leadership and it’s not an easy one to answer. For a long time, teams relied on simple output metrics such as lines of code written or tickets completed. While easy to measure, these numbers rarely told the full story.

More recently, frameworks like DORA and SPACE have emerged to offer a more thoughtful and balanced way of assessing software development performance. Instead of focusing only on volume, they look at outcomes, reliability, and human factors.

In this article, we’ll break down what DORA and SPACE metrics are, why they became so popular, where they can fall short, and which alternative viewpoints challenge their assumptions.

What Are DORA Metrics?

DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) metrics focus on one core idea: how efficiently and safely teams can deliver software to production.

Rather than measuring effort, DORA looks at the flow and stability of change. It does this using four key metrics:

A useful analogy is a restaurant kitchen. DORA metrics don’t care how many chefs are working or how hard they care about how often meals are served, how long they take, and how quickly issues are fixed when something goes wrong.

What Are SPACE Metrics?

While DORA focuses on delivery performance, SPACE expands the lens to include developer experience and team dynamics.

SPACE is an acronym that represents five dimensions:

SPACE helps organizations understand what’s happening beneath the surface.

Why These Metrics Became Popular

DORA and SPACE didn’t gain popularity by accident. They reflect how modern software teams actually work today:

• Teams are increasingly remote and distributed
• DevOps and platform engineering are now mainstream
• There’s a shift toward measuring outcomes instead of raw output
• Organizations are paying more attention to burnout and developer well-being

Practical Use Cases

Example 1: Scaling a DevOps Team

A growing company experiences frequent production incidents. By tracking Change Failure Rate and MTTR, they realize that faster deployments without enough safeguards are actually making the system less stable.

Outcome: the team invests in better CI pipelines, automated testing, and safer release practices.

Example 2: Developer Experience Issues

On paper, DORA metrics look great. Deployments are frequent and reliable. But SPACE surveys show low Satisfaction among developers.

Digging deeper reveals the real issue: too many meetings, unclear ownership, and constant context switching not technical problems.

Applying DORA and SPACE in Practice

The most effective approach is usually a combination of both frameworks:

DORA → Delivery capability
SPACE → Human sustainability and team health

Some practical guidelines:

• Look at trends over time, not individual performance
• Balance numbers with qualitative feedback
• Treat metrics as conversation starters, not final judgments

When used this way, metrics support learning rather than control.

Concepts That Go in the Opposite Direction

Not all measurement approaches align with DORA and SPACE. Some even work against their principles.

1. Output-Based Metrics

• Lines of code written
• Story points completed
• Tickets closed

These are easy to track but often fail to reflect real value or quality.

2. Individual Productivity Scoring

• Ranking developers
• Comparing commit counts

This often damages trust, discourages collaboration, and undermines psychological safety.

3. Pure Business Metrics

• Revenue per engineer
• Cost per feature

These can be useful at the executive level, but they’re usually disconnected from day-to-day engineering work to guide teams effective.

Conclusion

DORA and SPACE represent a more mature way of thinking about software development performance. They shift the focus from “Who is moving fastest?” to “How healthy, effective, and resilient is our system?”

When used wisely, these metrics can:

• Improve delivery reliability
• Support sustainable team performance
• Create better alignment between engineering and business goals

In the end, the real value isn’t the metric itself it’s the conversations and insights it creates.